


Busy Hearts

by PastelBlueDahlia



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Coaching, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, Pregnant Sex, escort AU, pregnancy au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 03:37:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13181541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelBlueDahlia/pseuds/PastelBlueDahlia
Summary: After an injury Katsuki Yuuri plans to retire and fully focus on his new student: Yuri Plisetsky. This not only involves trying to handle the temperament of the young boy, but also moving into the same apartment complex as him and dealing with his new gorgeous, lovely neighbor Viktor Nikiforov, who he became acquainted with as he booked him two years ago for one of the most passionate nights of his life.





	Busy Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> It's 3 am again ahhahah Im dead

 

_"It's everything for me. Without figure skating, I am nothing."  
_

_\- Evgeni Plushenko  
_

 

 

 

 

Yuuri doesn‘t know what happened to him.  
  
A second ago his heart didn‘t exist, was nothing more than a vague thing in one of his body halves, and in the moments he didn‘t skate it was hard to even determine on which side it was. The air was a cold and relentless burning thing on his cheeks, and he was soaring, invincible, couldn‘t feel his legs or his heart but a single thought rattling through his brain like a coin in an empty piggy bank. It‘s often like this in these moments.  
  
But that was a second, a lifetime ago.  
  
Now he feels everything so intensely that he struggles to breathe, and he‘s squirming on the cold surface like his body still wants to end the routine, back arched in pain into a perfect Ina Bauer, hands twitching into the carvings his own skates left on the ice until his nails burn, mouth hanging open as his vision swims and the roars of the crowd are a dull pain in the back of his head, pressure weighting him down like he‘s taking off to a flight.  
  
_I broke my lungs_ , he tells himself as he fights to get the air he so desperately needs because he can‘t find an explanation for feeling like a house which pillars came tumbling down, has no words because it feels like his body, his pride and joy betrayed him and crashed down like the ceiling of a church on a choral singer, a poor soul depending on the gods who sang their songs to them with every ounce of talent he could muster up. The gods decided after giving him so much that it was enough, finally getting tired of him, and answered with pain and abandonment.  
  
Katsuki Yuuri dies just like he lived on the ice.  
  
When he‘s put on a stretcher and his injuries are yelled to other paramedics over the screams of the crowd, they don‘t know about his death yet, because even just a stupid heart wants to survive.  
  
Yuuri would like to say that he thought of his family in that moment, of his parents watching their son squirm on the ice like a broken mechanic doll that still hasn‘t understood just how broken and useless it is, that he thought about them having to look at this with all the others in Hasetsu on their old grainy TV, that he thought about hammering hearts and wide eyes and _my baby my baby my baby how could this happen_ and hands that yet have to begin to tremble, but he doesn‘t.  
  
Yuuri only thinks about himself. And he thinks, _this is all over._  
  
After the operation when he‘s still pumped full with painkillers (Yuuri doesn‘t think this was a coincidence), his lovely, sweet parents appear beside his tall blonde doctor, worryingly holding hands as the lines of their faces deepen, and Yuuri never thought they would set foot in America and leave the  onsen to Mari with how stubborn they are, so stubborn they didn‘t even leave for their wedding anniversaries, yet here they are, to see their stupid, stupid son who couldn‘t even do the one thing he‘s supposed to be good at.  
  
Yuuri never allows himself to cry of pain, except the psychical one. This is no different, and for the first time since he‘s in the hospital he allows the tears to come. Still, when they break out of him as he looks at his parents, the sobs that rock his body like a lost boat in a storm startle even himself.  
  
There‘s another operation on his knee that fixes the problem that appeared when they messed up the first time. From then on it‘s pills and bed rest for decades, and after that exercise that should, would be so fucking easy if his leg wouldn‘t be this messed up, and he cries often now and has panic attacks because how the fuck could you not if you‘re wrapped up in the claustrophobic grasp of uncaring hospital staff and doctors and the suffocating embrace of loving parents who seem to almost be in more pain than he is.  
  
Sometimes he stares out the window and sees all the paparazzi lingering, but there are less and less of them. And when he‘s staring like that his eyes go blind, unseeing as he starts to notice just how insignificant he really is, how all his medals and money and sponsors and fans don‘t matter here, how he‘s just a man with clothes that stopped smelling like him, like _home_ , and the only difference is that he‘s got a single room and that people whisper a lot more about him.  
  
When his parents visit him and he sees their forced smiles he wonders just how long the paparazzi were waiting for any kind of information, like dogs waiting for scraps to fall off the table.  
  
Judging by the looks of their faces, they‘ve been there a long time.  
  
Yuuri wants to get _out out out._

 

 

  
  
Eventually, he does.  
  
He doesn‘t want his parents to be with him, so he tells them a different date when they could pick him up. When he steps outside the coldness startles him, and even more so the flashes of the cameras, the screams and questions he tries to ignore.  
  
Yuuri feels like dying when he finally sits in the back of his car, Celestino beside him.  
  
It‘s only when he gets his phone back that he notices he missed New Years.

 

 

  
  
„We could have picked you up.“ His parents say when he stands in front of the onsen, but he fobs them off with lies. Yuuri never knew he would be one to lie so much to his parents, and he finds that it‘s unnervingly easily.  
  
Yuuri falls apart.  
  
Here, he‘s nothing but plain old Yuuri, an unwritten white paper and not different from who he was when he left his hometown. He feels like a stranger in his own skin, a pathetic imposter who doesn‘t know how to act around his friends and family, around the neighbors and guests who saw him grow up and shed tears when he left Hasetsu to follow dreams that were apparently way too big for him.  
  
It feels like fate brought him back here to the starting point. He can almost feel its grasp around him, a pull in his arms like magnets, an invisible power that smirks and nudges him, asking „Can‘t you see it?“  
  
Yuuri can‘t.

 

 

  
  
Yuuri eats and sleeps and does the exercises the doctor prescribed him and takes the pills dutifully and his parents smile at him in that new, special way and he watches soccer with the other guests, utterly relieved to watch people running after a ball instead of being cut by blinding ice, and the question „When will you return to the ice?“ burns under his skin, but no one asks, and it‘s relieving but also terrible because it feels like Yuuri is the only one who can hear this horrible high-pitched sizzling sound of bubbling water and everyone else ignores it.  
  
Rinse and repeat, over and over again.  
  
It happens one morning when he runs up the stairs to Hasetsu Castle, his breath a white cloud in front of his face and the stairs slick from dew, that he falls.  
  
Everything happens in slow motion, again, and then Yuuri‘s lying on his back in the cold, wet gravel, eyes wide and heart beating out of his throat. His tears feel cold. He isn‘t hurt, and yet. He tries to breathe through his constricted lungs, and picks his body apart piece by piece, dissecting and examining it to make sure that he‘s unhurt and not broken.  
  
_I can‘t come back to the ice_ , the thought surges through him like a stroke of lightning, spreading fear and pain into his veins until he‘s lightheaded. _I‘ll quit skating_ he thinks frantically and winces at his own thoughts.  
  
When Yuuri comes home and soaks in the  onsen he feels washed out. He feels like a bleached piece of black clothing, a blotchy, ugly thing that reminds of magpies with their fat beaks and loud cries for food. Greedy and dark and unpleasant.  
  
He stares into the night sky, sees his breath in little clouds, shoulders wet and trembling. Yuuri hasn‘t changed one bit since he left home. He‘s still the little protected boy of his teens who‘s only, or rather _was_ only good at skating.  
  
The thing is that today made him realize just how fragile his own body is. One mistake and his career could be over once and for all. And he would have to go through all of this again, the hospitals and tears and the pain  and a life so empty that sometimes he woke up and asked himself in the mirror why he wanted to still go through all that, why he just didn‘t let go.  
  
Wouldn‘t it be better to just retire of his own accord while he still had his pride and dignity, to be remembered in old, dead paper and pages on the internet and be compared to the newer generations again and again and again, but at least still be remembered?  
  
He gets up to leave, tears burning in his eyes and throat as the door slams open with a force that makes him twitch.  
  
„Yuuri Katsuki!“ A voice shouts. Yuuri squeals and crouches down into the water, eyes wide as he hides his private parts with his hands.  
  
Yuri Plisetsky, the by far most promising junior skater looks like he‘s royally pissed. His brows are drawn together and there‘s a hoodie covering his blond hair. Yuuri feels cornered.  
  
„You will be my coach!“ Yuri declares, his pointer stretched out to Yuuri like he‘s daring him to dismiss him, his body tense and face determined. Yuri Plisetsky looks like he isn‘t going down without a fight.  
  
Yuuri tiredly thinks _why?_  
  
Fainting seems like the best option he has.

 

 

  
  
Yuri Plisetsky is nothing like his self on the ice, but Yuuri could already guess that from the interviews.  
  
Yuuri holds his cup between his hands, glancing up from it just to see Yuri sizing him up him like a jeweler, as if he doesn‘t know if the mineral he holds in his hands is worth as much as everything claims it to be. If someone asked Yuuri, he would have said no without a second thought.  
  
„I want you to coach me,“ he says. Yuuri furrows his brows and looks into the reflection of his black tea like it could give him the answers to questions he hasn‘t asked yet.  
  
„Why me?“ his voice sounds way too small for a living legend.  
  
His gaze flickers up reluctantly, and Yuri looks at him with a wrinkled nose, almost disgusted.  
  
„Because I want to be the best.“  
  
„You already have a coach. A coach with experience, and-“  
  
„And with methods and views from the last century.“ Yuri interrupts. „And I‘ll still train with Yakov. But I want to try new things.“  
  
It gets hard to look Yuri in the eyes now.  
  
He sighs. „Look, the reason why I come to you is because you‘re the living legend. And I want to know why you‘re so good. What makes you so different, and how can I include that into my own skating?“  
  
His mouth starts to taste like iron. He stops biting the inside of his cheek.  
  
„You have a coach and a choreographer. I don‘t see any place for someone like me.“  
  
„You‘ll be both of them. I just – I want my own routines,“ he says with a hint of desperation in his voice. Yuuri looks up and sees the confused, knitted forehead of a child whose words don‘t have the effect he needs them to have.  
  
„And I know you won‘t skate anymore,“ Yuri adds like a frantic afterthought.  
  
His heart is pounding in his temples as he sets the cup firmly down at the table, setting an almost physical end to the sentence. Yuri watches with unmoving face.  
  
„I haven‘t made an official statement yet,“ he spits with more temper than he feels.  
  
His forehead crinkles up again as something like hurt flickers over his face.  
  
„I want you gone by tomo-“  
  
„I saw you.“  
  
He furrows his brows and blinks rapidly. Yuri clutches his cup tighter and stares with green eyes into his face.  
  
„When that accident happened. I saw you.“  
  
Yuuri scoffs like a wounded animal. „Well, yeah, I‘m sure it spread quickly over social media.“  
  
„No, you – you were carried on this stretcher, and for a couple of seconds I could see your face, and you looked...“ Yuri bites his lip and curls in on himself, „You looked scared. And relieved. You looked more alive with a concussion and a messed up knee than when you did on the ice. That was when I knew you would take this as a chance and retire as a skater.“  
  
Yuuri gapes at him with wide eyes.  
  
„And I knew that everyone would flock around you once you decided to come back and announce whatever decision you made, so I thought my best chance would be to come and ask directly.“ Yuri looks up, pale lashes casting shadows. There‘s so much sincerity and hope under the mask he only set on top of his face, easily see through in a way that‘s almost physically painful because it only reminds Yuuri of how young he is and how they were at least in that aspect similar.  
  
Yuri consists of feminine shoulders and a hunched back, already protecting himself from the ultimate blow he seems to be so certain of.  
  
Depending on his answer, his whole life will change. Moving to a strange country, maybe even living with someone new, leaving his family again. No skating for a whole season.  
  
„Okay,“ he says, feeling terribly numb as he looks at the corners of Yuri‘s mouth and the smile he can barely contain in his excitement.

 

 

  
  
He promises Yuri to come to St. Petersburg in a few months after everything is arranged between Yuri‘s current coach and choreographer (because apparently Yuri came to Japan all by himself without telling anyone about it), then the apartment Yuuri will live in has to be rented and he has to say goodbye to his loved ones _(again)_.  
  
At the train station Yuuri smiles at him a little shaky and holds up his  pinky. „See you soon.“  
  
Yuri watches him with furrowed brows, rolls his eyes (Yuuri feels like he does that a lot) and links their pinkies. „You better keep your promise,“ he says and steps on the train.  
  
He waves at Yuri and smiles, but he clicks his tongue and turns away. He laughs quietly and buries his hands deeper into his pockets.  
  
_Is that the right decision?_ Yuuri asks himself. He was never a coach after all, and the most work he did as a choreographer was in Detroit when he gave others tips. How hard would it be to make a teenager listen to him and actually take his advice, especially with how much their personalities seem to clash?  
  
And yet, Yuuri is determined to at least try. It‘s hard to admit, but the thought about taking a whole season off makes a stone fall from his shoulders and his back straightens.  
  
Who knows. Maybe coaching Yuri will bring his love to skating back.  
  
Yuuri knows he‘s  terrible and he knows that Yuri doesn‘t deserve this, but it‘s just so, so much easier to submit to a storm like Yuri Plisetsky. Pretending to be swept away just so someone else can make the decision about his future. Yuuri is a thinker, a worrier, and letting go of all that for a little while to let someone else decide feels strangely refreshing.  
  
He can do one season.

 

 

  
  
His friends and family hide their worry behind smiles, and Yuuri feels terrible because he‘s so tired of it all.  
  
From then on it‘s like leaving Hasetsu for the first time all over again: crying behind closed doors and red eyes when they eat breakfast silently, the guilt bolting and gulping pieces of him greedily, and there‘s so much more hugs now and people bringing food for his recovery and his dad now starts to pat the place beside him on the floor so that Yuuri watches soccer with him even though he never cared for it, and sometimes there are hands on his shoulders or the swipe of a thumb over his knuckles and the trembling corners of a smile, and Yuuri feels like he‘s an earthquake or a tsunami, a big natural disaster that drags everyone into unhappiness with him. Everyone‘s happiness depends on him, and he‘s _so tired._  
  
A few months and he‘s gone. Until then, he wants to be as useful as he can.  
  
He helps Mari with the chores and helps his dad in the kitchen, while his mom just shoos him away. His family looks at him and smiles and yet it doesn‘t feel genuine. It‘s strange being treated like a broken child when his family never treated him like he was weak. It‘s  new and he hates it, and yet his heart aches with love and understanding.  
  
So he goes to Minako and helps her run the bar in the evening and by day teaches kids ballet. It‘s strange to be there after all these years, and he tries to not think about his knee too much.  
  
After the lesson parents begin to come to pick their kids up, and Yuuri‘s drinking from his water bottle as a dad walks up to him. He wipes his hand self consciously on his pants before shaking his hand, realizing too late that it‘s a western gesture. He still smiles and introduces himself as Nakamura, his rough, warm hands holding Yuuri‘s a second too long. It makes something warm spike in Yuuri that makes him feel filthy and his lips feel too tight from all the smiling.  
  
„It would be great if such a world-class athlete like you would teach the kids here at the ice castle skating. Mariko‘s always been such a big fan of you,“ he smiles while his daughter wraps a thin arm around his neck, turning her face away from Yuuri.  
  
He feels something hot clench inside him, a longing he can‘t name.  
  
„Maybe I will,“ he answers, not able to hide the hoarseness in his voice.

 

 

  
  
One week later when Yuuri wakes up and packs his things his heart is loud.  
  
He‘s almost outside when his mom catches him.  
  
„Where are – oh.“  
  
Yuuri turns around, almost sheepishly. The bag slung around his shoulder doesn‘t contain ballet shoes.  
  
„I‘m going skating,“ he says.  
  
The smile his mom gives him feels like the most genuine he saw in weeks.

 

 

  
  
When Yuuri steps on the ice, ten minutes before the kids arrive, it feels like he never left. He skates small laps across the rink, half expecting the ice to slip away from him and rip his knee open.  
  
Nothing happens.  
  
His head is loud like a beehive.

 

 

  
  
The kids that come to the skating lesson are rowdier than the kids by ballet even though many of them take part in both lessons. Yuuri supposes that‘s just a thing open space does to children. He feels Nakamura‘s eyes on him again, smiling and waving from beyond the barrier as he cheers his daughter on. Yuuri‘s cheeks heat up.  
  
_How long has it been?_ He thinks and is reminded of soft, silver hair between his fingertips.  
  
Yuuri doesn‘t feel as tired as he usually would, but the obvious reason is because with the kids he doesn‘t have to push through exhaustion and fatigue and pain until his lungs burst and it feels like he‘s inhaling fire. Instead, there‘s laughter and little puffs of white breath and delighted screaming when he swoops a child up in the air while he skates.  
  
Yuuri is alive and unbroken.

 

 

  
  
When the lessons ends there are countless voices screaming _Yuuri Yuuri Yuuri_, thrusting thermos cans into his hands or asking him to help untie their skates, kids sitting in his lap like they belong there and little gloved hands that squish his cheeks together, and Yuuri laughs.  
  
But something catches his attention in the corner of his eye, and there‘s Nakamura smiling so softly it makes Yuuri‘s smile deflate and a blush spreads on his cheeks again.  
  
The other parents are starting to stream in, talking and laughing with each other before they press their children close to their chests when they notice them, the screams of _Yuuri Yuuri Yuuri_ changing to cries of mama and papa, and in some empty cave of Yuuri‘s chest there‘s a painful burn.  
  
He will never be the most important person for these children.  
  
The parents thank him as they pack their stuff together while Nakamura takes his daughter to the toilet. Yuuri‘s smile feels strained on his face after he says goodbye to everyone, and then Nakamura goes to thank Yuuri again.  
  
„I would like to keep in touch to discuss the ballet and skating lessons, would that be okay?“ he asks.  
  
„Um, Minako-sensei is responsible for the ballet lessons,“ Yuuri stutters.  
  
„Oh, of course,“ he says and smiles even brighter, „The other parents wanted to keep in touch with you too, and I thought about making a group on Line?“ Yuuri nods then, and Nakamura‘s smile brightens again. Yuuri feels a swoop in his stomach.  
  
He grabs into his coat pocket and pulls out a strip of paper, and it‘s so endearingly old-fashioned and personal that it makes Yuuri smile. Their fingers brush and his smile falters, lips opening to say something before his gaze drifts to Mariko in his arms. He pulls his smile tighter and ignores the tingle of his fingertips.  
  
„Thank you,“ he breathes.  
  
Nakamura still smiles, something strained in the edges as he puts his daughter down. She immediately grabs her backpack and runs to the glass door leading outside, and Yuuri can‘t help but smile at her flopping pigtails before there‘s heat wrapped around his middle, a hand so hot he can count each individual fingertip on his waist. His insides tie and twists, making something hot pool in the pit of his stomach. Yuuri's breath hitches in his chest as he stares with wide eyes at the soft material of Nakamura‘s dark coat from this close, smells his cologne as he whispers with a hot breath into his ear: „Today she‘s visiting her grandparents.“  
  
Then his hot fingers trail slowly, almost teasing over his waist to his belly like someone would shed their clothes or take off a scarf, something languid and streaming, and it makes heat build feverishly under his collar and his abs clench with want.  
  
His fingertips brush over the shell of his own ear, over his belly, and he _knows._  
  
A couple of minutes later he saves his number and writes a simple hello.  
  
The answer is an address.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading ❤❤❤
> 
> My tumblr is www.its-peach-bleach.tumblr.com


End file.
